random thoughts from a wanderer

Weekly Ponderings

These are a few things I read recently that made me think. Posting these does not mean I fully agree with everything in the article or at the site it links to.

“Food is packaged for people married with children, government policies are designed around them. Sermons focus on marriage development and marriage retreats are given priority. We celebrate marriage, births, and anniversaries with social media posts and parties. The idealized and sometimes idolized trajectory of life is marriage, having kids, owning a house, retirement, and then the enjoyment of grandkids. This progresses to our twilight years being spent together reminiscing nostalgically about the past. There’s nothing wrong with this narrative. I just wish alternatives stories were promoted more in society.”

“Too many Christian theologians writing from the vantage point of imperial privilege talk about the sovereignty of God as though God is Emperor Palpatine holding every galaxy in his fingertips. But if Jesus’ cross is truly the self-revelation of God, then God’s sovereignty looks nothing like the self-validating triumphalism of empire. It is more like the elusive Force in the Star Wars movies that always seems to be on the verge of defeat, but always manages to beat impossible odds.”

“We are the winners and that means that everyone else loses. And by loses, I mean they lose everything. They go away into the outer darkness, to cry out for their mommies and daddies, wives and husbands, and sons and daughters, only to have them never come. And we, the ones who never go to their aid—either because we don’t want to or can’t—are supposed to think of our salvation as a victory.

And this gives us hope? Hope for what? Hope that when our loved ones are lost from us for all eternity that the best heaven God could come up with would require either a hardening of our hearts or a full frontal lobotomy?”

“I don’t want to stir up trouble or cause dissention either. I genuinely don’t enjoy conflict, and have no interest in alienating my brothers and sisters in Christ. I also want to focus on the gospel that unites us. However, if the gospel they are teaching hinges on the fact that men are spiritual authorities over women, then that is not the gospel that unites us.

…as a woman in ministry, I don’t have the luxury of “unity” that these male pastors have. I don’t have the option of learning to work together, because they won’t work with me. I’m not invited to the table, and my voice doesn’t count.”

“People fear those they’ve wronged. Savage knows that tremendous wrongs have been done to black people in America and he (and bigots like him) live in fear of the day when black people will exact revenge. What they’re too bigoted to see is the humanity of black people. He’s too blinded by his own hate to see that people of color want equality, not revenge. His brain is too small to imagine that there are millions of people in America who do not listen to fox news and the NRA and who aren’t plotting how to get even with a perceived enemy. Those millions of people want the same opportunities that jerks like him take for granted.”

“Mr. Bayly reads the Bible to mandate allowing a man’s false teaching to continue rather than have it corrected by a woman. And while he does tangentially say that one way he knows these two women in particular are wrong is because Mr. Piper and Mr. Wilson are not in error (a point on which Mr. Bayly himself is in error), he says the real way to tell that the women are wrong is by recognizing that they are women…

It is of less importance to Mr. Bayly that a pastor is a false teacher. It is of greater importance that women should not speak God’s truth in the face of that false teaching. He finds this supposed rebellion-against-creation-order to be a bigger offense than a false teaching from the pulpit. What an odd position for a person claiming to follow Jesus to take.”